I am on vacation now until October 7th (back to work day) and decided
that this vacation’s major efforts would be around getting my pantry tricked
out and finished. This is not without its own special set of concerns. The pantry was (when I moved in) a closed off
“porch” with a glass door that was somewhat less than secure. White vinyl
siding on all four sides AND along the slope of the ceiling and a small sheet
of vinyl flooring (long gone) to finish out the space and make it look pretty…
well, how about pretty-ish?
Anyhow,
the space became a catch all for junk and a storage space for tools, recycling
and so forth… Lead up to this past spring.
I knew that I wanted to convert it into a good old old-fashioned
pantry/cold storage room, but before that could happen the door would need to
be filled in and the outside wall sided in order to make certain it was an
actual room – and one that could be insulated and somehow sided.
Before
the kitchen windows were replaced I removed the glass door (and sent it to the
dump) and Mum and Dad came up in the spring to help me fill the doorway in, and
to put real cedar siding in place.
For
a reference point, today is Monday… Saturday I emptied out the room and took
some before shots.
Yesterday
I got started on pulling off the vinyl siding.
I watched a YouTube video – which was somewhat useful in showing me
what, in a perfect world, pulling off vinyl siding would be like. In
my world it was dirty, coal-dusty, spider-web filled and time consuming. The
good news is that I did not injure myself anywhere! How cool is that!
The
first panels I pulled off were around the small door-space that Dad and I had
built and insulated. Ok, really, my Dad
did most of the work and I was more like a helper (thank you Daddy!) but
anyhow, this is what the first space looked like. Not bad!
Wait…
the next wall I tackled was the one up against the kitchen – an inside wall. I
started to pull off the siding… and what?
Wait,
what??
OK
– so what I found was vinyl siding on top of asphalt siding. I called my Mum and between us we determined
it would be OK for me to remove the asphalt siding – it wouldn’t send any airborne
catastrophes into my home.
Cool.
So
then I pull off THAT layer to find a layer of tar paper. Hm. I’m
having flashbacks to wall paper now.
Under the tar paper is the ORIGINAL siding… but what? What was this?
I’m
still not certain if it is live – there is some sort of tester thing that could
be used but my contacts at Slegg tell me that those thingies are really
expensive… I took a picture and emailed it to them and they think it may be old
telephone cable, but are really not certain.
The thing is that it comes up out of my crawl space and goes through a
little hole in the wall into… space BEHIND a kitchen cupboard. And, unless I want to pull out that cupboard,
I’m not going to know where it goes. I’m not prepared to gut and refinish my
kitchen at this point.
So…
on with the siding removal. I got the
vinyl off all walls and, in the process, had to flip the breaker, pull off and
unscrew the light fixture in there and then put it back onto the boards… and I
found another thing that is perhaps not quite to code. Can any of you tell me what is wrong with
THIS picture?
I
bought murettes today and will be replacing that monstrosity of incompetence
with an up to code status in the next couple of hours.
Oh
– and then there is this:
Yes,
there is a wall, with actual plywood (not particle board, which I think is
useless) but the studs are sideways.
When I looked, I see that the reason they are sitting sideways is that
they are actually sitting on a footer that is, instead of being a 2x4, it looks more like 2x2… so the reality here is that I will need to build a wall
inside this wall in order to ensure it is actually offering enough (and the
right kind of) support to the roof line.
Oh – but something else to be aware of is that that “wall” doesn’t actually
touch the house – nope, it sits roughly 2 inches out from the house, You can
see light. You can see vinyl siding. It’s all very interesting.
At
this point I actually COULD cut through and install a window (or a port-hole?) because
I’m going to have to rebuild the wall properly anyhow, but I’m going to have to
really think that through. I have a week.
That
was where I left things last night.
Today I had a doctor’s appointment and some
running around to get done, so all I wanted to really accomplish today was
getting the rest of the crud off the final wall. I have managed to get that done and since it
is almost 4PM now, I’m thinking I will call it a day for the most part.
Now
let me tell you about today’s interesting finds.
Today,
while I was pulling nails from the wall where the light is I also pulled one of
the original nails in the house – it had popped and wasn’t flush and with some
effort (like some of the other nails) came out – I was quite surprised when I
examined it. It is rectangular, not
round. It isn’t pointed – I don’t know
if that is because they couldn’t put a point on nails way back when, or if
maybe the point rusted out, but I suspect the former – which means that
whomever was hammering in those puppies had a HELL of a job!
The
other thing I found was some crumpled up news-paper that was used to block a
draft - October 23, 1954, Vancouver Sun: A couple of the adverts I saw: 50
pound bags of potatoes were $2.19 and 20 pound boxes of McIntosh apples were
$1.29. There are also some real estate
ads – 4 bedroom home, full Pembroke plumbing (I don’t know what that is) an
automatic oil furnace, hardwood flooring though out and an attached garage:
$1,000 down, total purchase price $6,300. That was in Whalley. For reference,
the AVERAGE price of a detached home in Whalley BC today is almost $400,000.
Ok
– I need to think about dinner and how I am going to proceed now than I know
what my project needs next…
With
love across the waters…
